Spurs captain Ledley King was arrested over an alleged incident outside a nightclub. Photograph: Sean Dempsey/PA

Apart from his pants, one thing Nicklas Bendtner's trouserless nightclub exit revealed last week was that his manager's famous myopia is not as selective as has been uncharitably implied. It also kicks in when Arsène Wenger is confronted with paparazzi photos of one of his players emerging kecks-free from a nightclub at 4am. According to Wenger, Nicklas was "not drunk", but evildoers unnamed pulled his trousers down for him, though this occurrence was unfortunately not captured by the snappers. There may also have been a second trouser-puller stationed somewhere on a grassy knoll … but enough. The conspiracy theory is quite literally incredible.

Incredibly, though, it contrives to be less incredible than Harry Redknapp's pious reaction to Ledley King's spot of bother. The Tottenham defender, as you know, was arrested early Sunday morning, following a command performance outside another nightclub in London's aspirational West End. A number of allegations have been levelled against King – ranging from the illegal (assault, use of a racist epithet) to the merely odious (involuntary urination, comparing his salary to that of the bouncer, and then continuing to publicise this "boss man" remuneration at some volume in a police cell). No doubt we shall discover the veracity of these claims in the fullness of time, and in the meanwhile Ledley has been relieved of two weeks' worth of said boss man salary.

Yet according to the Spurs manager, the fault is less the player's than the booze for which he was such a leaky vessel, and to this end Harry announced he will be instigating a total booze ban at the club, adding that he would have no problem with testing players at training each morning.

"You wouldn't get these problems if they weren't having a drink," he explained. "It would stop. Too much drinking goes on in this country. Too many people are not happy unless they have had a drink." Redknapp's conclusion was stark: "I don't think there's any place in the game for drink."

And yet, isn't there, Harry? To pluck a scenario from thin air, a Merseyside derby might see Everton in their Chang-sponsored shirts meet Liverpool in their Carlsberg ones, perhaps in a Carling Cup tie. Man of the match would be presented with a bottle of champagne.

Then Carlsberg is "the official beer of the England team", whilst Spurs themselves also take the brewery's shilling, a tie-up which the club's commercial partnership executive welcomed thusly: "We are looking into in-ground promotions such as, 'win your weight in beer' to really bring the partnership alive."

Mmmm. The faintly inconsistent message appears to be that footballers can be used to flog as much alcohol as possible to us, but heaven forbid they should go anywhere near a drop.

But when you consider that the alcohol industry has been estimated to spend more than a quarter of its vast advertising budget on sports sponsorship and associated pushing, you might consider that the relationship between the game and its punters has the trans-fatty flavour of the Olympic Games longtime sponsoring by McDonald's. Or, if you prefer, the occasion a few years back when the boss of Barclaycard told a Treasury select committee that he wouldn't dream of using his own credit cards.

No one is suggesting that today's players should drink with the reckless abandon of certain of their predecessors, let alone that King's little display was edifying. But a total booze ban is gesture politics that ties clubs in moral knots. If they feel that even their committed and largely abstemious athletes can't be trusted to stop at the odd pint, then why are they so willing to push unsolicited adverts for this lethal substance on the rest of us?

Money is the answer, as usual, though you'll note formula one has managed to scrape together the gazillions it needs to function despite being ordered to kick the tobacco advertising habit. Within football, alas, even the slightest policy change can only be described as glacial. It was only last year that clubs agreed to remove the names of alcohol sponsors from children's replica shirts.

Speaking of his impending drink ban, Redknapp declared that "you don't put diesel in a Ferrari". Most football supporters are not Ferraris by any stretch of the imagination. But if the game really is fussed about this role model business, it should face up to its extremely willing part in what health experts insist is our national booze problem. After all, isn't moving out of denial the first step?